


The Rose and the Pearl

by MedieavalBeabe



Category: Phantom of the Opera, Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2017-12-29 16:48:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MedieavalBeabe/pseuds/MedieavalBeabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if the Phantom of the Opera was truly evil? What if Christine couldn’t bring herself to choose him? What if Raoul had been killed? AU: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical takes a dark and bizarre twist when Christine Daae runs away from the Opera House in Paris and winds up on a pirate ship called The Black Pearl, owned by none other than Captain Jack Sparrow...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Point of No Return

Christine Daae bit back a sob as she stared into the face of the Phantom. Distorted, deformed and skull-like he cut a sinister figure and she was afraid of him. He had already killed twice and now seemed about to kill again.

He held the end of a length of rope. The rest was around the neck of her lover, Raoul. He had given her the ultimatum. “Do you end your days with me, or do you send him to his grave?”

And Christine didn’t know what to do. Raoul was telling her to run but she couldn’t do that. Her heart was telling her to give herself to the Phantom in order to save Raoul, but somehow she couldn’t make herself do that either. 

“You try my patience,” the Phantom told her. “Make your choice.”

How had it all bottle down to this? At the beginning she had been merely a ballet dancer put on the spot by Madame Giry to take over from Carlotta after the temperamental diva stormed out and thus had become an overnight sensation with her beautiful voice. But now here she was and this was no opera on the stage; they were miles below in the catacombs of the theatre house and she must make her choice. 

“Choose the Phantom,” her heart told her. “It’s the only way to save Raoul.”

But surely there had to be another way? 

Christine fell to her knees. “Please, no, don’t make me...”

The Phantom regarded her with a cold and desperate look. “You must make your choice.”

“Christine, either way he has you,” Raoul insisted, willing her to run and leave him to his fate. But she refused to do that. Yet she couldn’t make herself walk to the Phantom and kiss him. And she couldn’t very well remain like this forever, just on the floor with her fallen angel about to kill her lover. 

“No, there must be some other way,” she begged. “Please, no...”

“If you want him to live you must choose me,” the Phantom said. 

“No!” Raoul insisted. “Christine!”

Christine looked up, through tear-filled eyes, into the Phantom’s face. It wasn’t his face that terrified her, not now at any rate, but his soul, his attitude, the way in which he killed without a second thought. She remembered the way he had reacted when she had removed his mask the first time; how violent he had been and how terrified she had been. Even though he filled her spirits when he sang to her, and his music lifted her, and inspired her voice, as it had always done so in the darkness of night, she was afraid of doing anything other than his will for fear of someone getting hurt. 

Could she really go through life afraid, even to save those she held most dear?

She loved Raoul, she did, and if the choice came down to merely that with no result of death at the end of it, she would have chosen him and gladly. And she knew in her heart of hearts that if she truly loved him nothing could stop her from saving him. It was so simple. All she had to do was choose the Phantom; tell him, yes, she would be his forever if he would only let Raoul live. 

But fear prevented rational thought from forming and she stared into the dark eyes of the Phantom, the eyes which haunted her dreams as had the power to both threaten and adore a person both at the same time. 

She was afraid and how could she not be? The Phantom terrified everyone; and he terrified her most of all. In her mind she tried to picture the life they might have together. He would write music and she would sing it. But it would be far from a harmonious marriage, she knew. How many of her days would be spent in fear, treading on eggshells around him? How many nights would he spend committing murder to ensure their secret was safe? How often might he physically hurt her if she failed to obey him? True, he hadn’t yet, but the thought of him having the strength and stomach to do so terrified her.

A lifetime of that?

“I can’t,” she whispered. 

It all happened so fast. 

Before Christine had even staggered to her feet in the hope of catching the Phantom and holding him back, begging him to release them both, he had tightened the noose in a swift flash of red. Christine felt the scream rent from her body as Raoul flailed, muscles spasming and failing, and she couldn’t move, just stand and scream at the top of her lungs as she watched him murdered right before her eyes. 

Only the Phantom stood silent.

And then it was over.

Raoul was still. Christine felt her legs give out and though giddy she realised she hadn’t the strength to faint. And then, desperate willing this to be all some nightmarish trick conjured by the Phantom to frighten her, she crawled forwards through the slimy water towards Raoul’s lifeless form as the Phantom’s grip on the rope slackened and he slumped into the water. Christine clasped his body with weak arms, willing life back into him, sobbing, singing, shaking, whatever might rouse him. This had to be a dream; this couldn’t be real. 

“Oh, Raoul, Raoul!” she sobbed, cursing herself for not being stronger. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! This all my fault! Oh, Raoul!”

Raoul stared up at her, motionless. There was no life left in him at all. Christine collapsed against his chest, weeping. The Phantom, meanwhile, stepped, like an automaton, past her and picked a mask up from the dressing table. He covered his deformities once more as Christine cried for her dead lover. 

“Angel of Music?” Christine choked out, eventually, raising her head. “Angel of Death!”

The Phantom turned to her. She didn’t like the look of his smile now. “You made your choice.”

She saw that he was holding the veil he had made for her; to marry him in. She was too choked by tears to respond to him, so she wept for Raoul all over again. 

Then, the sound of approaching marching and voices reached her ears. 

“Track down this murderer, he must be found!”

“Fools,” the Phantom muttered, and Christine heard him move about behind her. She turned and stared. 

He was gone. 

For a second, this didn’t seem to register with her. Her tears drying on her cheeks, she turned and kissed Raoul’s forehead. 

“Track down this murderer, he must be found!”

Panic gripped her as she realised that the party, probably made up of the police and other angry theatre workers, were fast approaching. And then she realised that the Phantom had left to deal with them. Which would mean that he would be too preoccupied with that to try and keep her from running away. 

And she had to, she knew, or else she may never be free from his terrible hold. 

Reluctantly, she dragged herself to her feet, still clasping Raoul against her. She didn’t want to leave him here; but she couldn’t take his body with her, wherever she was going. She couldn’t carry him. She wished she could at least bury his body properly, but she had no time. 

There was only one logical solution. 

She pulled him up the steps and arranged him, lying on his back, hands folded, and then, reaching out a trembling hand, she closed his eyes. 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, tears forming again. “I love you.”

With a rustle of skirts, she got to her feet and reached for one of the torches hanging from a bracket on the wall. There was a bottle of red wine beside the bed where the Phantom had laid her when she had fainted the first time she had come here. He had probably, she reflected, been saving it for their wedding night. Now it could serve another purpose. 

“Track down this murderer, he must be found!”

With the place ablaze, Christine turned and hurried down a narrow passageway. She had no idea where it led, but judging from the draft she felt it must lead somewhere outside. It was cold and she was dimply wearing a wedding dress with short sleeves, made from thin flimsy material, but she didn’t care. The skirts prevented her from running very fast, and she was quickly forced to stop and fix the problem by tearing the hem until she was left with a long stretch of fabric in her hands and a skirt that barely covered her knees. Throwing this around her shoulders like a make-shift shawl, she hurtled onwards, running so fast, and so blinded by another bout of tears that she ran into walls that bruised her arms and sides, she eventually burst through a small crevice in the wall. 

Before her was a flight of stairs. Up this she ran until she reached the top and felt a stone above her move. Pushing it back, she blinked at the starlight, wondering where she was, and then, realising that she had no time to hesitate, she pulled herself up, tearing her skirts, and out into the cold night air. 

She blinked. She was in the cemetery. The same cemetery that her father’s grave lay in. 

She threw a glance over her shoulder in the direction the Daae tomb lay in. Again she hesitated, all sorts of thoughts mingling in her mind. 

“Help me, Father, what do I do?”

Even though she was far from the theatre, she didn’t feel free. The Phantom would soon catch up to her if she didn’t keep on running. But where did she go? 

“Anywhere,” her heart told her. “As far away from here as possible. Leave this life behind.”

She turned and hurried from the graveyard. She had no idea where she was going but she kept on running until she could run no more, and then she walked until she got a second wind and ran again. 

By morning she was exhausted and had blisters on her feet the size of diamonds on the chandelier that had been brought crashing down by the Phantom. She had cried a few times, once in panic when she had thought someone was following her and it turned out to be nothing. 

Automatically she wondered where the Phantom was and what would happen to him. If her was caught, he too would hang, like Raoul, for his crimes. But if he escaped from their clutches, then she would be his once more. 

Presently she came across a signpost. Calais, 100 miles.

Calais? That was near the sea. Her heart leapt. Maybe if she could get aboard a ship, somehow, then she could leave this place. Either that or end up working in the docks. Pushing that thought to the back of her mind, she made her decision. She must leave France; that was all there was to it.

But how could she board a ship with no way of paying for passage?

Little did Christine know that there was a way. For even as she began to the trudge to Calais, a ship was making its way towards the docks. 

A ship named The Black Pearl...


	2. A Pirate's Life For Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if the Phantom of the Opera was truly evil? What if Christine couldn’t bring herself to choose him? What if Raoul had been killed? AU: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical takes a dark and bizarre twist when Christine Daae runs away from the Opera House in Paris and winds up on a pirate ship called The Black Pearl, owned by none other than Captain Jack Sparrow...

Captain Jack Sparrow saluted the early morning docks of Calais as they came into view. “Lower the colours!” he commanded. Far be it for them to advertise their status as pirates to everyone in this dock; if the local police force stopped by, they’d really be for it. And Jack had had enough of running for a while. 

“Jack,” said Joshamee Gibbs, his partner in crime and trusted follower, “why exactly have we made port here?”

“’S’where the compass told us to, mate,” Jack replied, flicking open his magical compass, which pointed to whatever he wanted most. Right now, that seemed to be the Calais dock ladies. “I’m goin’ ashore, keep an eye on the Pearl.”

“Keep an eye on the Pearl,” Gibbs said to Marty. 

“Keep an eye on the Pearl,” Marty said to Pintell.

“Keep an eye on the Pearl,” Pintell said to Ragetti. 

“Keep an eye on the Pearl,” Ragetti said to Cotton. 

“Squawk! Keep an eye on the Pearl!” echoed Cotton’s parrot. 

So it was that Jack and a few of his crew members went ashore. Of course, the majority of them went off to “stock up on rum,” as Gibbs put it. 

“Anyone who falls behind is left behind,” Jack reminded them, before turning his attention to a group of rather attractive young women who seemed to be eying him up. 

None of them noticed, at first, a traumatised young woman wearing a tattered white dress, melting her way into the crowds. The place was filled with early morning sailors, either departing for sea accompanied by their lovely ladies of the night before, or else getting in to find some girls looking for a fun time, and so naturally anyone who did see her assumed that she was just another prostitute. 

Christine, for her part, was beginning to feel slightly safe. Though guilt at leaving the Phantom, her teacher, her Angel of Music, to the hands of a mob that would probably tear him apart, plagues her, she knew in her heart that she had had no choice. If she had stayed, he would have loved her alright, loved her until his love killed both of them. Raoul was gone, and now she had to go too. Where, she didn’t know, but she just had to escape, get as far away from France as possible. 

“Excuse me, but could you-?” she began, but the sailor swept past her, escorting the pretty lady in the lovely dress in the direction of his ship. Christine bit her lip, her nerve failing her. She took a deep breath and tried again. 

“Pardon me,” she began to a group of girls, who simply looked her up and down and then carried on flirting outrageously with a group of sailors, giggling and fluttering. 

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, finally collaring one of the men, dressed in a neatly pressed uniform, looking authoritive. He turned and fixed her with an interested, almost lecherous look that Christine, in her state, missed. 

“Can I help you?” the man asked, his tone as lecherous as his expression. 

“I need help.” Christine rubbed her brow. “I mean, I need to get aboard a ship, to…to anywhere. But I have no money to pay for passage-”

“Well, I think we can remedy that. I have a ship.”

Christine felt a ray of hope. “You have?”

“Certainly. Why don’t you come with me, and I’ll…show you the ropes.”

Naively, Christine followed him around the corner of the building. “Well, where’s your ship?”

“Oh, it’s over there, in the harbour,” the sailor replied, waving a hand in the direction of the docks. 

“So, what are we doing here, then?”

“Discussing terms.”

“Terms?”

“For your payment of passage.”

Before Christine could utter another syllable, his mouth was on hers and she was pinned up against the walls. Christine made a startled cry, muffled as his tongue lashed into her mouth and though she struggled, she was weak from walking so far all night and he was a good deal stronger than she was. The stone of the building scraped against her skin and his rough hands chafed her wrists. 

“Let me go!” she whispered, terrified, trembling as his hands began to move lower towards the torn folds of her dress.

“Oh, come on,” he crooned, kissing her roughly. Christine attempted to wriggle free, but she was trapped between him and the wall. 

“Please, no!” she exclaimed, her voice hoarse and rough. “Let me go!”

“It’s not going to take long!” He seized her behind, pinning her harder against the wall and then his hands were creeping up the bottom of her dress. Christine gasped. 

And then, before he could go any further, a hand came down on his shoulder and pulled him away. Stunned, the sailor looked up into the pirate’s face. 

“That’s not very nice,” said Jack. 

The sailor wrenched free of his grip. “What’s your game?”

Jack produced a pistol. Christine stared, terrified, and so did the sailor. Without a word, he ambled off, leaving Christine and Jack staring after him. 

“Strange fella,” Jack observed. 

Christine couldn’t bring herself to speak. Instead, she simply sank to the ground, buried her head in her arms and began to sob, although no tears came. 

“It’s alright, love,” Jack replied, pocketing his pistol. “I’d never shoot a lady; well, alright, maybe on three occasions, I might have done, but not right now.”

Christine looked up at him. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. 

“Jack!” Jack turned his head as Gibbs and the others, loaded with boxes and bottles of rum, came up. Gibbs beckoned with his head towards the Pearl. 

“I’ll be right there!” Jack replied. 

Christine looked over at Gibbs and the others as they stepped onto the dock and made their way towards the Pearl. “You…you have a ship?”

Jack straightened up, proudly. “I do, indeed, the finest ship ever built; fastest ship in the Caribbean, the Black Pearl.”

“Then, can you take me with you?” Christine scrabbled to her feet. “Please? I’d be no trouble. I just want to get away from this place.”

It was, of course, bad luck to have a woman aboard ship, but in Jack’s view it could also be far worse not to, and in the course of recent years the Pearl had had its share of female passengers; Annamaria, Elizabeth Swann and Tia Dalma. Jack looked her up and down. “Why? Yearnin’ for the glamorous life of the sea, love?”

“No.” Christine mopped her face. “I’m being pursued, I think, by a man who is obsessed with me and I’m terrified that he’s going to find me, and he’s already killed my lover and I just want to get away…” she trailed off, sniffed and tried to look a little more dignified. “If you could just take me somewhere else, anywhere, I don’t care; England or, or anywhere, I don’t care. Please.”

Though he would never care to admit it, Jack quite liked the idea of being needed, and whilst he didn’t usually go about doling out good deeds, something told him that it would be worth it in the long run. “What’s your name, love?”

“Christine Daae.”

“Well, Christine Daae, the ship’s about to leave, and to be perfectly honest, I haven’t got the slightest clue where our next evading is, but if you want to join up with me and my crew, then you’re perfectly welcome to.”

Christine felt another glimmer of hope, stronger this time than the first. “Thank you, Mr…”

“Captain Jack Sparrow.” Sweeping off his hat, Jack gave her a gallant bow. “If you’d like to follow me, darling.”

Ordinarily, Christine might have been creeped out by his use of the terms “love” and “darling” when addressing her, and yet something told her that he used them as sort of terms of affection rather than lecherous terms, so, follow him she did, although when they reached the ship, she wasn’t entirely certain about his crew. To her, they looked like a rag-tag bunch of misfits; two of them especially looked rather creepy, a short man with matted hair and his lanky companion, who looked to have a false eye. 

“Right, gents, hoist the mainsail and smarten yourselves up a bit; we’ve a lady aboard,” Jack said, swaggering gallantly as he stepped aboard. 

“What’s going on?” Gibbs muttered to him. 

“Girl needs to escape from someone; I’m doing her a favour,” Jack muttered back.

Gibbs shook his head and then turned to Christine. For a second she was reminded of Joseph Bouqet, the man in charge of the flies at the Opera House, and the Phantom’s first victim there. He gave her a polite smile. “Welcome aboard, Miss…”

“Daae, sir,” Christine replied, with a small curtsey.

“Oh, no need to be callin’ me “sir,” or any of us, Miss Daae. It’s Gibbs.”

“Those clothes do not flatter her,” Jack pointed out to him. “It should be a dress or nothing.” He glanced at Christine. “I don’t think we have any dresses…”

“I think Mrs Turner left some of her clothes aboard in the cargo hold,” Gibbs interrupted before the men’s minds could be opened to lecherous thoughts of Christine in her underclothes. “If you’d like to follow me this way, Miss Daae; I’m sure you’d like to change out of those rags.”

“Thank you, Mr Gibbs,” Christine replied, following him. 

“Weigh anchor, cast off!” Jack ordered, and as Christine looked around the ship one last time before descending into the cargo hold, she wondered just what kind of ship she had stepped aboard…


	3. Yo-ho-ho and a Bottle of Rum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if the Phantom of the Opera was truly evil? What if Christine couldn’t bring herself to choose him? What if Raoul had been killed? AU: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical takes a dark and bizarre twist when Christine Daae runs away from the Opera House in Paris and winds up on a pirate ship called The Black Pearl, owned by none other than Captain Jack Sparrow...

“Ah! I thought so!” Gibbs held up what looked like a pair of women’s cut breeches, a loose shirt and a tan waistcoat from a pile of assorted clothing atop a couple of barrels. “I think you and Miss Elizabeth are about the same size.”

 

“I’d have to wear breeches?” Christine asked, doubtfully eyeing them. The last time she had worn them had been for a show, when she had been cast as the mute page boy of the opera Il Muto and back then she had found them rather uncomfortable to wear as opposed to a dress. 

 

“They’re best for a young woman aboard a ship,” Gibbs replied, kindly. 

 

Christine took them from him and smiled. “Well, thank you, Mr Gibbs.”

 

“Please, Miss Daae, really, it’s just Gibbs.”

 

“Well, then, Gibbs, you may call me Christine.”

 

Gibbs returned her smile. “Well, I’d better get to the top deck. Don’t worry, no one’ll disturb you whilst you’re changing. I’ll see to that.”

 

“Thank you,” Christine called as he courteously closed the door behind him. She hesitated and then began to change from her torn wedding dress, fighting back a sob as she once again reminded of her Raoul and how he had been ripped from her so recently. Folding the tatters carefully, she pulled on the shirt and the breeches. They were surprisingly roomy, she was pleased to find. The waistcoat she decided to pull on simply as an extra layer. Looking around her, she saw that the room was filled with an assortment of odd trappings; large barrels, chests, boxes of all sizes, from tiny trinket boxes to a large chest; a silver bowl full of apples on the table, a chess set, bottles on the shelves...just what kind of ship was this? Christine wondered as she finished lacing the ties of her shirt and buttoning up her waistcoat. She resolved to ask Gibbs, or Jack. He seemed a little strange to her, but yet she felt he was trustworthy, somehow. 

She left the room and wandered through the deck, looking around, observing every little detail. Ropes here, barrels there, what were they full of? Some fine wine to be shipped to another country? Or more apples like those in there? Knot holes, creaking floorboards, the sloshing of the sea outside...she memorised them all, the sounds, the smells, everything that made this ship what it was. What was it called again? The Black Pearl. She guessed it must be named that for its black sails. It did sound a strange name for a merchant ship...unless...unless this wasn’t a merchant ship but a ship that did a trade of a different kind. 

 

Christine took a deep breath of realisation. She had read stories about pirates when she was younger, but she had never imagined that they might suddenly materialise inside of Calais like this. Her heart began to race. Oh God. Had she escaped the Phantom only to fall into the hands of another foe? But then...they had seemed so friendly, well, Jack and Gibbs had. She had to admit the other crew members terrified her a little but surely they had to be good too, if their Captain and his first mate were?

 

She hesitated on the step and then mounted them up to the top deck. Jack as at the wheel, studying his compass. “All hands!” called Gibbs as the other crew members pulled on a length of rope. “Lash it fast! Cotton, swab the deck!”

 

“Awk!” said the parrot on Cotton’s shoulder. “Swab the deck!”

 

Gibbs turned to smile at Christine as she approached. “Welcome back.”

 

Christine took another deep breath. “Mr...Gibbs, can I ask you something?”

 

“Anything you like, lass,” he replied. 

 

“Are you...pirates?”

 

Gibbs glanced at Jack who hadn’t taken a blind bit of notice of Christine’s reappearance on deck. “He didn’t tell you?”

 

Christine shook her head. Gibbs rolled his eyes. “Well, in answer to your question, Christine, yes, we are pirates, but you don’t need to fear us. We’re more the kind for seeking treasure and exploring far off lands rather than looting and pillaging people’s towns. If anything we’re usually on the run from the law, so...” He made a hand gesture and shrugged. “Well,” he folded his arms, “you just don’t need to be afraid of us.”

 

“We ‘ave our heading!” Jack announced, striding forwards from the wheel. He let go of it in the process and the ship jolted on a wave. 

“Whoa!” all the crew exclaimed in unison as the all slid from one side of the deck to the other. Christine too felt herself dragged backwards and as she hit into the mast, one of the other crew members, one with a wooden eye slid into her. “Ooh, hi,” he said.

 

Christine stared at him in shock. Gibbs shoved him away from her. “Daft bugger!” he snapped, turning to Jack, who seemed to realise his mistake and righted the ship. “Jack, what are you doing? Marty, take the wheel!”

 

“Gladly,” said the dwarf Marty, striding forwards to relieve Jack of the wheel. 

 

“We ‘ave our heading,” Jack said, again.

 

“Aye, I gathered,” said Gibbs, shaking his head. “And just where are we heading to?”

 

Jack pointed. “That way.”

 

Christine looked in the direction he was pointing. “What’s over there?”

 

“God knows,” replied Gibbs. “I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”

 

Christine frowned. Jack walked past her to the bow of the ship. As the rest of the crew went back to their jobs, she walked after him. “You don’t know where we’re going?”

 

“I know where we’re going,” Jack replied, sounding slightly indignant. He looked at her like he’d never seen her before. “We’re going that way.”

 

He pointed again. Christine almost laughed. “But you don’t know what’s over there. Which direction is that? North?”

 

Jack flipped open his compass and showed it to her. Christine frowned at it. It didn’t look like any compass she had seen before, not that she had seen many in her life, but she had seen a few in pictures. “This compass doesn’t point North, love, or South, or East, or West, or any other direction. It points to the thing you want the most. So what I want most in the world is that way.” For emphasis he pointed a third time in the same random direction. 

 

“So what is that?” Christine asked. 

 

Jack faltered. “I’ll find that out when we get there, love.”

 

Christine looked over her shoulder at the pirates. They seemed what people might call a “motley crew” and they were certainly a band of misfits. The one with the wooden eye had just said something to his counterpart, the one with straggly hair, who was giving him a raised eyebrow look that was almost comical. Marty was steering the wheel with an experienced turn of hand. Cotton was busy swabbing the deck with a thick mop. “Shiver me timbers!” squawked the parrot. Cotton looked annoyed at that and swabbed harder. Gibbs finished whatever it was that he was doing and leaned against the railing. He took a hip flask from his pocket, pulled out the stopper and took a swig of it. That made Christine remember something.

 

“What’s in all the barrels downstairs?” she asked.

 

Jack gave her a funny glance, like she ought to have known. “What do you think?” Christine shrugged, innocently. “Rum, love.”

 

“Rum?”

 

“Aye. Speaking of which...” 

 

Beckoning her behind him, Jack led her back down below deck and into the room she had changed in. He unstoppered one of the bottles and held it out to her. “’Ave a swig of that, darlin’.”

 

Christine took the bottle gingerly. “Do you have any glasses?”

 

“Glasses?” Jack laughed. “What’d we need them for on a ship like this?”

 

He took a swig from his own bottle of rum. Delicately, Christine put her lips to the bottle neck and tilted it back, pouring the stuff inside into her mouth. It took her completely by surprise, such a rough, fiery liquor that burned her and she coughed as it hit the back of her throat with brute force.

 

“Yer never done this before in yer life, ‘ave yer?” Jack asked, watching her. 

 

Christine spluttered and lowered the bottle. “No.”

 

Yet, in spite of its awful taste, Christine felt that she rather liked it. It did taste like nothing she had ever had before. She took a tiny sip and it hurt her mouth less. 

 

“So, I never asked,” Jack drawled, inviting her to sit in a seat whilst he leaned against the table. “How’d you wind up down there in the docks in a white dress? Jilted yer fiancé?”

 

Christine shook her head. “No! No, I...I was running away from something...someone...a monster who wants me.”

 

“Ah, well, I’ve seen plenty o’ monsters in my time,” Jack replied, proudly. “Slain a couple too.”

 

Christine managed a smile for the first time in several days. “I doubt you’ve ever met one like this one. He was a man...but he terrifies me so much. And he...he killed my fiancé.”

 

“So you’re single, then?” Jack replied, brightly. 

 

Christine had no idea whether he was teasing her or not. She took another drink of rum; she was beginning to get used to it now. “He killed so many people, without a second thought. I felt guilty when they wanted to capture him because he’d taught me to sing, but then I just knew he had to be stopped somehow...and I don’t know what happened when I left, I just ran and ran all the way to the docks.” This time she couldn’t stop the tears as they came out thick and fast. “I felt sorry for him at first but then when he started to kill I became so afraid and it seemed like no matter where I turned he was there. No, I just don’t want to think about him anymore, I don’t want to think about any of it. I just want to forget the pain.”

 

Jack, looking slightly bewildered, and awkward, that she was unburdening herself on him, and not sure of how to respond, got to his feet. “You know what’s good for pain, and forgetting? Rum! And lots of it! Drink up, love!”

 

Christine took another drink, feeling slightly light headed now. “He was deformed, and I think he must have been born like that because he said it “earned a mother’s fear and loathing” and I did feel sorry for him but it was because of that that he was so terrifying; he could change from normal to psychotic in a single second, and he kept saying I was his! It scared me so much I couldn’t even sleep some nights!”

 

Feeling braver, she got to her feet and drowned her throat in rum, not caring about how sharply it burned her. Jack watched her, still looking ever so slightly alarmed by how quickly she had turned from teetotal to heavy drinker. Stress could so that to you, though, he reflected. After all, it had happened to Commodore Norrington that time after he had been demoted from Commodore; he had hit the bottle pretty quickly after that. It hadn’t stopped him from being any less of a fighter, though. 

 

Christine lowered the bottle and gasped for air, a low rasping sound. Jack realised that she was already halfway to being tipsy. “If he hadn’t tried to kidnap me; if he hadn’t killed; I would have sung for him when he wanted me to, just he was so...so violent, it scared me, and I don’t like being scared all the time.”

 

“No one does, love,” Jack replied, admiring the way she kept knocking the rum back. 

 

The bottle empty, Christine tipped it upside down and shook it to see if any stray drops lingered but when none came, she lay the bottle on its side on the table and then, much to Jack’s surprise, she took the bottle straight from his hands, ignoring his yelp of “Oi!” and began to choke that back too. Jack quickly gathered several bottle up in his arms to keep her from snatching them up too. Christine had drained half of Jack’s bottle before she spoke again. Her voice was no longer tearful but somewhat fierce and stumbling. 

 

“And what he did to Raoul...and set fire to the theatre! He’s a monster so I have to go...have to go...somewhere else. Not there, somewhere else where he...isn’t there.” She chugged another mouthful before going on. “This is good. I...where was I? He was a monster, did I say that already? Me and Raoul, Raoul and I, we could have gone on, together, lived, had babies, got married, no wait, got married first, then had babies, and we could have...gone on. I’m a singer, did I say that? I sing, I sang, I sing, like this...” She let out a sweet high top soprano note that could have shattered any mirror in the place, had there been any, and Jack couldn’t help glancing worriedly at the windows just in case they cracked. Christine finished off his rum and reached for another bottle. Jack held them out of her reach. With a pout, Christine hurried for one on the shelf that he’d missed. She had no idea what had come over her; she just knew that she had to do two things; keep talking and keep drinking. 

 

“I mean...” she trailed off, trying to unstopper the bottle, eventually getting it and letting it pop off, narrowly missing Jack’s eye. “I loved him...and I could have loved...loved...love, love...the Phantom...did he even have a name? I called him...used to call him Angel of Music but he’s Angel of Death...Master of Death...Death on swift wings, like everyone always warned me about...I used to be just another ballet girl before I started singing...” She drained half the bottle. 

 

“I think you’ve ‘ad enough, love,” Jack said, hoping that she’d either stop or pass out sometime soon, otherwise the rum would be all gone. 

 

“Mm!” Christine giggled, high and tinny. She was definitely drunk now. “I have had enough...of being scared...and him...scaring me...and trying to hurt me...he killed...Raoul...and he won’t kill me, no, no, no.” She drained the bottle and then, to Jack’s alarm, threw the empty thing at the wall. It shattered at once into a million pieces of glass. Christine giggled again, staggering slightly, and then she took one stumbling step forwards and tumbled. Jack managed to grab her. Christine put her arms around his neck to support herself and blinked up at him. 

 

“Jack...you’re nice...you’re good...”

 

“And you’re a woman who’s had far too much to drink, love,” Jack replied, putting all the other bottles on the table and catching hold of her waist. 

 

Christine seemed to steady herself, and as she looked up at him, though her eyes were bright and her smile far too happy to be sober, what she said next was deadly serious. 

 

“You won’t let him get me, will you, Jack?”

 

“Um...” Jack looked her up and down. She was so far gone there was no way she’d remember any of this in the morning. “Sure, love, whatever you say.”

 

Christine smiled, tilted her head back, closed her eyes and then slumped forwards, completely out of it. Ordinarily a man could take advantage of a situation like this, but Jack, despite all his faults, even with women, was a gentleman at heart, though he’d never admit it in a million years, so he dragged her over to the chair she’d been sitting it and sat her back in it before making a hasty exit. 

 

“Gibbs!” he called as he clambered onto the deck. 

 

“Aye, Cap’n?” Gibbs replied, at his side. 

 

“Do me a favour. Hide the rum.”

 

It did seem like it might be fun having a woman aboard again....


End file.
